By selecting two openly gay athletes as U.S. delegates to the 2014 Winter Olympics, President Obama has delivered the latest body blow to what was to be Russia’s big moment on the international stage.

By now, Vladimir Putin’s government must be reeling from the intensity of the negative international reaction to the anti-gay propaganda law adopted in Russia in June.

The Sochi Winter Olympics were intended to raise Russia’s standing in the world by promoting foreign investment and tourism. Instead, Russia faces an avalanche of push-back from world leaders, including Obama, who has named two openly gay women — former tennis star Billie Jean King and Caitlin Cahow, an Olympic medal-winning women’s hockey player — to the American delegation.

Neither Obama nor Vice President Joe Biden will attend the opening ceremonies. French President François Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck also will be skipping the Games. While neither France nor Germany explained its reasoning, many believe it’s tied to alleged human rights violations in Russia, as well as the anti-gay legislation.

At a time when Russian diplomacy on Syria is restoring some of the international standing and influence lost when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia’s efforts to better its image have been substantially undermined by its recent homophobic enactments. Putin’s handling of this mess amounts to a massive missed opportunity.

Russia’s attack on the rights of homosexuals has included passing a law banning adoptions by same-sex married couples and by citizens of countries that permit same-sex marriages, as well as the now-infamous law that criminalizes propagandizing on behalf of “nontraditional sexual relations.” Both laws were adopted by overwhelming majorities in the national legislature.

The notion of prohibiting “homosexual propaganda” to protect children is not a recent idea in Russia; it has been kicked around in Russian national and regional legislatures for 10 years. More than a dozen of Russia’s regional legislatures adopted similar laws in that time. At the national level, anti-gay propaganda legislation has been introduced several times from 2003 to the present, without success until this year. The idea for this legislation arose in the provinces, gained momentum as it was adopted by regional governments and then was brought into the national legislature by individual legislators, not at the direction of Putin and his Moscow colleagues.

Nevertheless, Putin bears some responsibility for this homophobic legislation. He has consistently sought to promote an ideology advocating Russian nationalism and close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. The result has been a rise in xenophobia and occasional hate crimes directed against Muslim immigrant workers from Central Asia, Asian and African students, and homosexuals. Putin has promoted an atmosphere in which the prejudice and passions embodied in the anti-gay propaganda law can thrive.

Americans should not feel smug about Russia’s benighted attitudes toward gays — the movement to ban homosexual propaganda had at least some of its roots in the United States. An American minister, Scott Lively, pushed for the adoption of such a law in Oregon during the 1990s. When that failed, he took his movement on the road, promoting the idea in Eastern Europe and convincing some of the politicians he met to introduce this legislation.

In the end, Putin missed a wonderful opportunity to play the role of statesman rather than his usual role of nationalistic tough guy. In the interest of burnishing the luster of the Sochi Winter Games and bolstering international respect for Russia, he could have taken the high road and asked his parliamentary majority to take no action on the homosexual propaganda law. Or he could have vetoed it after the Federal Assembly passed it.

Instead, he took a decidedly lower road, siding with — and in doing so, encouraging — the homophobic, xenophobic elements within Russian society.

Michael Newcity is deputy director of Duke University’s Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies. He is an attorney, Russia scholar and expert on the Russian legal system. Have an opinion? Go to njvoices.com.